Divided
by hazeltwist
Summary: Oneshot: Naruto follows Sasuke to a place where he discoveres that they may have something in common after all.


**Title: **Divided

**Theme: **#1** - **Five Shades of White

**Character:** Uzumaki Naruto

**Series:** Naruto

**Rating:** Teen, for language

**Notes:** This fic is told in first person by Naruto, who is a bit older, and narrates the story as one of his own memories.

There's this really weird street on the south side of Konoha.

There are only six houses on the whole strip of land, and to make it worse, five of them sit on one side.

Those houses are white… or each is some kind of white, anyway. They don't really match. And they're on this kind of slant, you know? So if you look directly down the street, you can see a bit of the next house peeking out before each previous one… kind of like looking straight down at a flight of stairs.

What's even stranger is that the house on the opposite side of the street is almost pure black. The paint, the door, the windows are even tinted. The only color on the whole thing comes from the shutters, which are this faded out red. Actually, the whole house is really shabby. Not as nice as the white houses anyway, and it's obvious the white ones are lived in, since they're kept pretty well, from what I could see. I'd bet no one's lived in that black house for years.

The street itself is pretty small, I guess. I never would have known it existed if it hadn't been for Sasuke.

Sasuke is another reason why the street is so odd.

We had just finished training one day, and we were all sick and disgusted of being outside. It was raining, and we were all covered in mud and dirt, and getting nowhere, so training had been cut short early. Kakashi dismissed us, but he wasn't really letting us go just because of the rain. We've trained in rain before. No, he let us go because Sasuke was being a bastard again and belittling me, acting all high and mighty and stronger-than-thou and crap again.

So I guess we looked kinda stupid… covered in mud, clothes torn and faces bloody, and he was sitting on my back bent over with me yanking on his hair from in front of him. And Kakashi just plucks Sasuke off and tells us to go. Like I wasn't gonna follow him and kick his ass anyway! So Kakashi and Sakura-chan leave and I give Sasuke a few minutes to stalk off so I can track him without him knowing… you know, to get in a good surprise attack.

I really should've thought ahead. Tracking people down when it's raining is TOUGH. It took me a good half hour to find the asshole again, and by that time it was already night. I was even more pissed than I was at practice. I would have given him a real good smack upside the head too, if he hadn't looked so… sad.

It was that street I found him on. Sitting on the roof of the black house, that faces the white ones. He had his knees drawn up and his arms folded on top of them, resting his chin on his wrists. I couldn't really help it… I couldn't feel angry anymore. I know he's my rival and all, and I shouldn't give a damn what he's feeling. I know I shouldn't care… but it's hard to remember what I shouldn't be caring about when I see that look on someone's face that I know I've worn so often myself.

He was staring at those white houses, with that look. I admit, all anger disappeared and was replaced by this insane curiosity, but that night I never got a chance to figure out why he was there, because his face turned towards me and impulse made me duck behind a tree. I waited a minute and took a quick glance around, and there he was, staring at the white row again. So I took off running.

It was lucky we had no training the next day. I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to keep myself from looking at Sasuke strangely. Not that I really care, but I think Sakura-chan might have gotten mad if I stared at him like he had 3 heads.

So I roamed around town, bumped into Kiba, who chased me for six blocks because I accidentally stepped on Akamaru's tail, escaped and ate lunch at Ichiraku Ramen, then went off and vandalized a statue in the honor of the Obaasan Hokage, and ended up sitting on a bench, bored out of my mind.

Alright, not bored. I knew what I wanted to do, but was resisting the impulse to go to that particular place. But after thinking about it for a few minutes I figured, what the hell, and took off for the south end of Konoha. I managed to navigate the streets I ran circles in the day before and found myself on that lopsided road, around the same time I had been there before.

There was no one on the road, just as there had been no one when Sasuke sat staring across the street. He wasn't there now, so I walked up the street until I reached the black house and climbed the wall up to the roof, dodged a weak looking patch of shingles and sat myself exactly where he had been.

From my spot, I could fully see the fronts of all five houses. I hadn't been able to tell from the side, but now that they were all in full view, it slowly became clear why my teammate had looked so upset.

They were all small houses, but I think most would call them cozy. Each had a garden out in front, but no other yard had a single plant any other yard had. One had a fountain in the center, with a ring of red and white flowers surrounding it. Another had a big wooden Welcome sign hammered into the ground, and a small flower-lined path led to the front door. The third house had a small pine tree in front of a bunch of large bushes, the fourth had a weeping willow off to the side that was so large it drooped over the house itself, and the fifth yard was all cobblestone and littered with potted plants.

Though all the houses were similar in structure, they were unique in their own respects. I don't know, I don't usually care about houses and lawns and all that. But these houses were special. They were so well cared for, and so trimmed and clean and… inviting.

That's not what got me though. As I looked at the white row in front of me, the windows caught my eyes. Each house had a large front window, and through these windows I saw five families. A couple small, three of them pretty big, all sitting around their own individual tables, eating together. Of course, it was the time when most families would sit and eat dinner, and the whole area was obviously family oriented, and probably free of shinobi and violence. So fathers and mothers sat with their daughters and sons, with the occasional grandparent or cousin or whomever it happened to be joining them. They talked and laughed and shared, and just seemed so… happy.

A cold feeling started to settle over me. I felt suddenly tired, and I brought my knees and arms up to let my head droop and rest on them… strongly reminded of someone who had sat that exact way not too long ago. The houses no longer seemed inviting. In fact, they seemed more like a tease than anything else… a vision of something I could never have, no matter how much I wanted it.

A small sigh behind me, and my head spun so fast my vision blurred for a moment.

There stood Sasuke, arms folded over his chest and eyes boring holes into my head. I stared back with little emotion on my face, and his hard look seemed to soften. He knew as well as I did the pain of watching these content families. He knew I knew as well. We stared a moment longer, neither of us moving an inch until finally he stepped forward. Slowly, he made his way to my side and sat down, pulled his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms over them. I returned to the position as well, and there we sat. Neither of us took our eyes off the five unique houses, each its own shade of white, nor did we look at each other. We just sat on our lonely black house, and after a while, it didn't feel so lonely anymore.


End file.
